Today in Sports History #16 - Olympic Games Lake Placid (February 23, 1980)
These Olympic Games have been the first I can remember watching - on February 23, 1980 the XIII Olympic Winter Games closed at Lake Placid, New York is our topic of Today in Sports History.
Some of the highlights included the great Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark who won the giant slalom and the slalom. In both races he was behind on the first run but came back sensationally on the second.
Ingemar Stenmark
East Germany’s Ulrich Wehling won the Nordic combined for the third time. Biathlon star Aleksandr Tikhonov (USSR) won his fourth straight gold medal in the relay race.
As already posted some days ago US-American speed skater Eric Heiden won all five speed skating events from 500m all the way up to 10,000m with setting Olympic records in every race.
Main highlight for me was the Ice Hockey victory by the US rookies realising a miracle against the USSR. The Soviets did dominate Hockey since the 1950ies and the US team was more or less a team of university players, not including the NHL top stars.
The United States team's 4–3 win against the Soviets became known as the "Miracle on Ice" and captured the hearts of Americans during a time of Cold War tensions.
So unexpected was the team’s victory that their achievement was turned many years later into a Hollywood movie.
Sources: Olympic.org, USAHockey, NYDailyNews, Pixabay and Wikipedia
To see what happened in Sports History already - check the links below:
February 17: Invention of the Bike
February 15: Olympic gold twice
February 12: Team Canada Ice Hockey
February 11: Mike Tyson knocked out
February 10: Mark Spitz Birthday
February 9: Volleyball invented